


Search and Rescue

by umbralillium



Series: I can't escape this now [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: F/M, dragon!Jaskier, monster!jaskier, playing fast and loose with Witcher canon as one does
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22808164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umbralillium/pseuds/umbralillium
Summary: Geralt finds Ciri then goes in search of Yennefer, meeting friends new and old along the way.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: I can't escape this now [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639681
Comments: 28
Kudos: 315





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all so much for the kudos and comments on Protection. I didn't think anyone else would go for my silly idea, but ya'll proved me wrong. I hope you enjoy this continuation as much as you did the first story.

_“Who is Yennefer?”_

“Where did you hear that name?” Geralt asked, holding Cirilla firmly by the shoulders.

“I had a dream,” Ciri answered, eyes going distant as she remembered. “There was a burned field, a woman was yelling for her, then you were. There were cinders and frost in the air. Jagged ice and dancing flame. You called and called. There was no answer.”

Geralt looked toward Sodden, but the wood was too dense to see the battlefield.

“Stay with Yurga and his family,” Geralt commanded, heading back towards the house and the cart Roach was tied to, long legs eating up the distance.

“I’ll not leave you!” Ciri protested, hurrying to keep up with him.

“It’s too dangerous for you there,” he answered, not slowing down.

“And it isn’t for you? Injured as you are?” she replied, grabbing for his arm.

He stopped, fighting the instincts that urged him to punish her for daring to grab him so. “Cirilla—”

“Fiona,” she interrupted, glancing behind him towards the homestead. “Cirilla died in Cintra.”

He dipped his head in a brief nod. “Fiona. We cannot know who survived the attack on Sodden. Until we do, it is safer for you here. Yurga and his family can protect you.”

Tears gathered in Ciri’s eyes. “Everyone who’s helped me has died,” she choked out.

“I’ll not be gone long.” He crouched down to be on her level. He looked into her eyes for a long moment, reaching up hesitantly to wipe away a tear that had left a shimmering trail down her cheek. With his other hand, he lifted his medallion over his head. “I’ll be back for this.” He held it up for her to take.

Her eyes widened and she took it with a trembling hand. She stared at it, smoothing her thumb over the wolf. “You promise?”

“I promise.” He stood and hugged her. “I will return for you. People linked by destiny will always find each other, remember?”

She nodded against his shirt before pulling away. “Don’t get hurt any more than you already are,” she demanded.

A wry smile tilted the corner of Geralt’s mouth. “That I cannot promise.”

An answering, wan smile flitted over Ciri’s face.

They walked the rest of the way back to the homestead in silence, Geralt walking slower this time so Ciri could keep up.

Yurga and his wife were waiting for them by the cart. “Keep watch over Fiona,” Geralt requested, heading for Roach. Her ears were alert, twitching to catch any sound as Geralt untied her from the cart. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”

“Where are you going, Butcher?” Yurga asked, concerned. “That wound’s not healed enough for travel.”

“Sodden.” Geralt said tersely, climbing onto Roach’s back with a wince.

“Yer mad!” Yurga protested, turning to look at the smoke drifting above the forest.

“Hmm,” Geralt grunted as he turned Roach towards the road to Sodden. “Wouldn’t be the first to say so.” He dug his heels in and Roach started forward. “I _will_ return,” he repeated, meeting Ciri’s gaze. She nodded jerkily and he nodded in reply before looking forward to guide Roach to the road. Once on the road, he heeled her into a swift canter.

As Yurga had said, it took an hour to reach Sodden on a swift horse. As he got closer and spotted bodies on the ground, he pulled Roach back to a walk, keeping an eye out for anyone still moving. There was no movement around him. Smoke lingered in the air, stinging his eyes, nose, and throat, coating his tongue in ash.

He continued on. The edges of a conflagration filtered into the forest: some trees still smoldered, others burned entirely to ash. Geralt pulled Roach to a stop and dismounted, grunting when his left leg protested at taking his full weight. Ash and dust rose beneath his boots as he walked towards the epicenter of the blaze.

The more he walked, fewer and fewer trees were left standing until it was an ashen field, with only rocks to block his view.

“Yennefer!” he heard a woman calling.

Roach nickered, ears swiveling toward the voice. Geralt turned and started towards the call.

A bedraggled sorceress wandered through the wastes, head turning as she searched. Spotting Geralt, she stopped, staring at him, weaving with weariness.

“You’re looking for Yennefer?” Geralt asked.

“Yes,” she replied, eying him. “Who are you?”

“Geralt of Rivia,” he replied. “I’m looking for her as well.”

“Why?”

“She’s…a friend,” he answered hesitantly, looking away from the woman to look around more. “What happened here?”

“Chaos,” the woman replied. “I am Tissaia.”

Geralt turned back to her sharply. “Yen’s teacher.”

Tissaia dipped her head.

“I was told there would be frost and ice as well as fire,” Geralt said. He frowned as a strange sound reached his ears.

Tissaia laughed with a tinge of hysteria. “Magic can do many things, but peace between fire and ice?”

“Hmm.” Geralt tilted his head, trying to identify the sound.

“What is it?” Tissaia asked.

He raised a silencing hand. It sounded almost like…wings? But larger wings than he’d ever heard before. He looked up, searching the clouds of smoke. The smoke danced more strongly to the east and he started that way. “Yennefer!” he called, Tissaia echoing him moments later.

They kept calling as they walked, eyes searching through the ash, dust, and smoke.

After long minutes, Geralt heard the wing beats stop and stopped himself, frowning. A swirl of cold air reached him to his left. Turning, he loped towards it, gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg.

Fires still dotted the landscape, but as he kept going, shards of ice joined the fires. He rounded a large boulder then froze, eyes wide.

“What—” Tissaia started to ask as she came around beside him, then stopped as she saw what he had.

In the middle of the barren field, lay Yennefer. Kneeling next to her was Jaskier. Around them, cinders and frost fell.

“Jaskier?” Geralt asked, throat tight.

Jaskier’s head jerked up. “Geralt,” he said, relief suffusing his voice. “Can you do anything for her?”

Tissaia pushed past Geralt to join Jaskier at Yennefer’s side. Geralt kept staring. Jaskier hardly looked any different than he had when Geralt last saw him. All that had changed were his clothes: more finely made than Geralt had seen him wear before with silver iridescent scales across the shoulders. Moving closer, Geralt kept his gaze locked on Jaskier. The man was clean, he realized. No blood, no ash, only what had smeared on his knees from kneeling.

“How did you get here, Jaskier?” Geralt asked, looking away to look for a horse. Aside from Roach, there were none.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jaskier replied, watching Tissaia tend to Yennefer.

“This is beyond my ability to heal,” Tissaia said. “I need Triss.”

“Triss Merigold?” Geralt asked, surprised.

Tissaia nodded. “She’s the best healer Aretuza’s ever produced.”

“Will Yen survive long enough for us to find Triss?” Geralt questioned.

Tissaia’s silence said more than words.

Jaskier hung his head and sighed. After a moment, he looked up at Yennefer’s pale, still face. “I’m going to be very cross with you for this, when you wake up,” he told her.

“Jaskier?” Geralt finally joined the other two beside Yennefer.

“Hush, I need to work,” Jaskier said dismissively, holding his hands out over her and closing his eyes.

Geralt and Tissaia exchanged a glance as Jaskier started chanting in Elder. The air rippled with magic between Jaskier’s hands and Yen’s body. Geralt and Tissaia watched as what visible wounds Yen had knitted themselves back together. Color returned to Yen’s face, even as it started to drain from Jaskier’s.

Moving around Yen’s prone form, Geralt knelt next to Jaskier. “That’s enough, Jaskier,” he said softly, not daring to touch the other man. “She’s healed enough for travel.”

Jaskier let his chanting trail off and slowly closed his hands, the ripples of magic flowing back into him. He slumped, panting, and Geralt rested a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “I didn’t know you could do magic,” Geralt observed softly.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Geralt of Rivia.” Jaskier didn’t look up.

Geralt looked around them at the shards of ice that remained despite the fires burning so close. He turned back to Jaskier, his eyes catching on a line of silver scales creeping up his back under his collar. “Hmm.”


	2. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yennefer wakes after releasing her chaos.

Yen woke with a groan. She heard a skitter of movement and opened her eyes, only to wince away from the light.

“She’s awake!” an unfamiliar voice called, and she groaned again, pressing a hand to her head. “Sorry,” the person murmured.

Squinting her eyes open, Yen peered at the girl beside her bed. She was blonde with bright, curious, yet haunted, green eyes. A worn blue cloak was wrapped tightly around her small form.

“Hi,” the girl said shyly.

Before Yen could reply, a familiar tall, dark-clad form stepped into the room. “Yen.”

“Geralt,” she replied, her voice barely more than a croak. She coughed to clear her throat as Geralt ducked his head into the hallway to speak to someone.

“Ciri,” the girl offered with a faint smile.

Yen tried to peer into Ciri’s mind but winced at a flare of pain. When she opened her eyes again, Geralt was standing behind the chair Ciri was sitting in. She looked between the hand resting on Ciri’s shoulder and Geralt. “Your Child Surprise?” she asked, a wealth of emotion in her still-hoarse voice.

He hummed and nodded.

She snorted wryly. “As loquacious as ever,” she said.

“As charming as ever,” a new voice quipped, and Yen looked to the door to see Jaskier standing there with a pitcher and a cup.

“Jaskier,” she greeted coolly.

“Yennefer,” he replied, his voice just as cool as hers. He crossed the room to set the pitcher on a table by the bed and to hand off the cup to her. Task completed, he stepped back to Geralt’s side.

She watched the mismatched trio as she drank, wrinkling her nose at the taste. Not plain water, then. Stopping at Jaskier’s clothes, she frowned. “Isn’t that a bit shiny even for you?” she asked.

He didn’t even look down as he smiled at her a tad too widely. “It’s all I had to hand when I saved your arse.”

She raised an eyebrow skeptically. “You?” she scoffed. “Taking credit for Geralt’s work now, bard?”

Geralt shook his head as Jaskier sputtered indignantly. “Jaskier reached you before I arrived,” he informed her.

“I damn near drained my own magic healing you, I’ll have you know!” Jaskier finally gathered himself to retort.

Yen’s other eyebrow rose. “You? Magic?”

“Sorcerers aren’t the only ones who can wield magic,” Jaskier reminded her derisively.

“Jaskier,” Geralt warned lowly.

Jaskier snapped his mouth shut on any further retort before turning and heading for the door. “Come on, Ciri, you really don’t want to be here for their reunion.”

Ciri looked to Geralt who nodded towards the door and released her shoulder. She stood and hurried after Jaskier.

Shifting, Yen propped her pillows against the wall at the head of the bed and sat up, wincing again at the renewed pounding in her head. She frowned when Geralt didn’t move to help her, he simply stood there, arms crossed.

“Drink,” he reminded her when she was settled again. “Triss added a tincture to the water to help with the pain and your depleted magic.”

She ignored him in favor of asking, “Jaskier really saved me?”

“Yes,” Geralt answered shortly.

“ _How_?”

“That’s not my story to tell,” he replied, meeting her baffled gaze.

After the previous spike of pain from trying to read Ciri, she held back the urge to do the same to Geralt. She huffed and drank more. “Like he’s going to tell me how he did it.”

A bare hint of a smirk tugged at his mouth. “That’s for the two of you to sort out.”

She scoffed but didn’t reply. An awkward silence fell between them. “How long was I unconscious?” she finally asked.

“Four days,” he answered, still watching her.

She stared back at him. “Fuck.”

“Hmm.”

A knock sounded at the door and Yen looked over to see Tissaia standing in the doorway.

Geralt nodded a greeting to her as he turned from the bed and walked to the door. Tissaia moved past him, followed quickly by Triss. He closed the door as he left the room.

“Welcome back,” Triss said briskly, sitting on the edge of the bed while Tissaia took the chair.

“I’m glad you both survived,” Yen replied, looking between them.

“How do you feel?” Tissaia asked, leaning forward slightly in her chair.

“Tired, sore, and I have a massive headache,” she answered honestly.

“I should say so,” Triss said, checking Yen’s cup before refilling it. “I want you to finish that pitcher by nightfall.”

Yen glanced out the window and saw it was a couple hours past noon. She nodded in agreement.

“What do you remember, Yennefer?” Tissaia asked.

“Releasing my chaos,” Yen replied, closing her eyes as she remembered the conflagration that had spread from her hands. She frowned as she remembered the taste of blood. Reaching up, she wiped at her face. No blood.

“We cleaned what blood there was when we brought you here,” Triss informed her.

“And where is here?” Yen asked, glancing around for the first time.

“A merchant’s home near Sodden,” Tissaia replied. “Do you remember anything after that?”

Yen closed her eyes again, searching her memory. “I remember the fire,” she murmured. Something teased at her memory. “Then there was…cold?” She frowned, opening her eyes. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

“When the Witcher and I found you,” Tissaia began. “The bard was already there. There was fire and ice all around you both.”

“Fire _and_ ice?” Yen asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Tissaia answered. “So far, the bard has given no explanation for how the ice got there, nor has he explained why it didn’t melt from the flames.”

“Have you heard of such a thing?” Triss asked Tissaia.

“Nothing verified,” she answered, shaking her head. “But some of the oldest texts in Aretuza’s library speculate that dragon ice is night-impossible to melt. There are even tales that it can encapsulate fire.”

Triss and Yen stared at Tissaia for a long, silent moment before Yen broke into laughter. “Are you telling me you think Geralt’s little songbird is a _dragon_?” she asked through her peals of laughter.

Tissaia gave Yen her familiar scolding stare. “You didn’t see that battlefield,” she reminded Yen. “Can you give a reasonable explanation for I saw there?”

Restraining the last of her laughter, Yen shook her head. “Perhaps you were hallucinating.”

Tissaia sighed, shook her head, and stood from the chair. “I’ll leave you to your rest.”

“Thank you,” Yen said softly as Tissaia walked away.

Tissaia paused and looked back at Yennefer long enough to give a nod of acknowledgement before leaving the room.

Once Tissaia was gone, Triss turned to Yen. “Now then, how are you feeling?” she asked briskly.

Yen groaned and slumped back against her pillow, resigning herself to Triss’s examination.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting closer to the big reveal! Hopefully, the next chapter will be from Jaskier's pov and I'll finally get to write the scene that set this whole story in motion.

**Author's Note:**

> As I said in the tags, I'm playing fast and loose with Witcher canon with this one. IIRC, there aren't silver dragons in Witcher canon. Also, Gold dragons are the only ones that can transform into something else. Yeah, I'm hand-waving that. I based Jaskier's dragon abilities on silver dragons from Dungeons & Dragons. Also, seeing as dragons are likely inherently magical creatures, Jaskier himself is a source of magic, thus him being able to heal Yen without taking from something else.
> 
> If anyone wants to screech about these idiots, I'm on tumblr as umbralillium as well


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